Reviewer:

Great Recipe! I made a few tweaks: when placing rolls in over to bake, place a shallow dish with 1/2 cup of water on the bottom rack as well. The moisture helps to give it that great crust that you find at bakeries and is delicious. Additionally, I added cheddar cheese and crumbled bacon to the dough and then sprinkled the tops with cheddar cheese as well after I sliced an "x" into the top. Beautiful and delicious, my faince will be so happy!

Reviewer:

Definitely needs salt. Doubled so I could make long rolls for sandwiches; used almost 5 cups flour, not quite. Taste was good, except for needing salt, texture inside was great. However, outside came out too crispy, maybe it was the egg wash, I'm not sure. Will try with salt and no wash next time.

Reviewer:

I'm glad I read over the reviews before making this. Using 1 tsp of salt really brought out a good flavor to the bread. I used water, but will try it with milk for comparison the next time I make it. I am a beginner when it comes to baking but I found this recipe extremely simple and quite forgiving! While making the dough I was worried that it was too dry and added a little bit of water. It ended up making the dough wetter than I wanted. Lucky for me, using some of the reserved 1/2 cup of bread flour while kneading fixed it right up again. Maybe it was because of my earlier fudge-up, but I ended up kneading the dough a little bit longer, about 10-15 mins. to get that good, squishy elasticity. Instead of making 12 small rolls, I also made 8 slightly bigger rolls so I could use it to make sandwiches. In an end rush I forgot to separate my egg white and used the whole egg with some water to make the wash.. No biggie though. I baked them on a stone for 20 minutes until beautifully golden brown. After cooling they came out really soft and chewy. I used them tonight to make buffalo chicken sandwiches and honey mustard chicken sandwiches. Both got rave reviews! This will definitely be one of my go-to recipes. Thank you so very much for sharing this!

Reviewer:

With changes this is a 5 star recipe! My husband is a German citizen, and we go there often for extended vacations, we always miss the bread when we get back. We have tried dozens and dozens of times to bake brotchen rolls, one weekend we made over a half dozen recipes, this was the best one of all the recipes we tried but we made *Several* changes to get the flavor we wanted. We only bake this kind of bread on a stone if possible. We also added about a tsp of salt, and increased the sugar to about 2 tbsp. Don't use water, but use whole milk instead. Make the rolls bigger, only 8 not 12. The second time they rise, don't cover them with anything. Finally about the actual baking. Place a tray of ice cubes on the bottom of the oven to create a nice steam in the oven, and only cook these on the bottom rack. Follow this method and it will be the closest you will get to real brotchen without going to Germany.